


shod with stardust, gloved in flesh

by MadameDeBergerac



Category: Cyrano de Bergerac - Edmond Rostand
Genre: (only hinted at but it's there), Alternate Universe, And Just How the Hell He Copes With It, Averted Main Character Death, Suicidal Ideation, You can't keep a good warrior poet down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 07:26:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21454249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameDeBergerac/pseuds/MadameDeBergerac
Summary: He's always going to be there... whether the world likes it or not, and he wouldn't have it any other way in the end.The 1964 movieCyrano et d'Artagnanhad the unmitigated gall to have Cyrano survive the end of his play, and you can't just give me that information without expecting me to do something with it.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	shod with stardust, gloved in flesh

I’ve been thinking a lot about Cyrano et D’artagnan—namely, about this older alternate Cyrano who seems to have survived his own story and the heartbreaks and headaches that came from it. I’ve been thinking a lot about how he could have possibly coped…

Because what a beautiful exit that would have been! Seeing the spirits of cowardice and compromise and vanity and Death itself and refusing to surrender—“I fight on! I fight! I fight again!”—and squeezing in one last bit of poetry, knowing that his salute to the kingdom of God would blind the very heavens themselves, and that his soul, the white plume of freedom, would remain unblemished as a testament that he was there, he made a difference, he loved and struggled and mattered… what a fool, but what a gesture. The very best farewell to this mortal coil a man with any poetry in his soul could possibly ask for…

And then he doesn’t end up dying. How unfair. How cruel.

And what do you do when that noble death has been denied you? How do you fight on and fight and fight again when you were so willing to relinquish all that you had been fighting so passionately for? How do you content yourself with this withering brown garden of an earth when you were ready to venture onward to those gold-paved roads and white temples of song? You can’t go back to your regiment, at least not right away—no sense in giving a pack of already-traumatized-to-some-extent young men the shock of their lives by parading your ghost in front of them. You can’t go back to Roxane—if she mourns you and Christian, she mourns knowing how much you loved her and how exquisitely happy you wanted her to be, and who are you to ever deny her that? So that’s your band of brothers and your dearest love denied you. They have their own lives you can no longer intrude on… what remains now?

Well, you did say once that you would be satisfied with flowers, with fruit, with weeds even, so long as you cultivated them yourself. Even as a boast, a flourish of bravado protesting the need for the friends you now miss so much, there is a corner of your soul that grows wistful at that idea. Why not—you’ve earned it, haven’t you? After so long fighting, leaving pieces of yourself behind on the battlefield, don’t you deserve that sublime peace, that beauty that not even your rich store of words can do justice? It may not be heaven, but it’s the next best thing. Because if you can’t hear the ring of your brothers’ swords and the whispering silken gown of your beloved, you might as well hear something. Something quieter, to remind yourself that there are still things worth living for.

So you disappear from Paris and into the countryside where no one knows your name. The anonymity chafes for a while, but there’s a strange comfort in not constantly having to account for yourself. You content yourself with simplicity, with garden vegetables instead of Ragueneau’s pastries and weatherbeaten books instead of Moliere at the theater. There, you live honestly for once, until these distractions become fascinations—the woods beyond your door, the piercing calls of owls and hawks, the sweep of daffodils painting the riverside yellow as sunrise. Some things truly are more beautiful than the words we describe them with, you notice.

There, you can see the moon and the stars more vividly, and you dream again about reaching them someday… which explains the chalk drawings across your walls of wings and flying machines and the dog-eared pages of Galileo and Brahe strewn across your tables. Your neighbors think you mad, but they thought those two splendid minds mad, too, didn’t they? What an idea, that you may someday equal them—maybe not in accomplishments, but in ambition, in far-flung fantasies that the world remembers hundreds of years hence. Your imagination flourishes in this glimmering field of possibilities. Birdsong becomes a beckon for you to join them on high, and you listen more keenly, reaching ever farther for that unreachable star. And you stand, alone it may be, but higher than ever before.

And still you keep your sword sharpened. Sentimental reasons, you tell yourself. Your white plume is still immaculate, your spirit still stoked to roaring flames. And when your friends find you again, a quieter man and a little more peaceful with your mind refreshed, you are ready to fight once more, for the thrill of the fight and the aspiration toward the stars that you’d never realized cried so loudly from your soul until now.

That is how Cyrano de Bergerac comes back to life. Unspotted from the world in spite of doom.

**Author's Note:**

> I had written this a few months ago on my Tumblr, and I wanted to publish it here to get it out of my system while I worked on the beast that is "The Dimension". NaNoWriMo has turned into my personal very slow-acting vampire for me, and I wanted to make sure I still put other content out there in the meantime. I hope you guys enjoyed this!


End file.
